# MiniMax Speech-to-Text vs Soniox Speech-to-Text

> Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) to MiniMax Speech-to-Text's 48.4 (D) for speech-to-text. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/minimax-stt-vs-soniox-stt
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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
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- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against MiniMax Speech-to-Text's 48.4 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do speech-to-text.

- MiniMax Speech-to-Text: grade D, 48.4/100, rank #1126 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/minimax-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/minimax-stt.json
- Soniox Speech-to-Text: grade B, 68.5/100, rank #286 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/soniox-stt.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/soniox-stt.json
- Best speech-to-text APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/speech-to-text/index.md
- All 320 stt comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/speech-to-text/index.md

## Which one, for what

### MiniMax Speech-to-Text (D)

Good for: Cheap file transcription with diarisation and subtitles, strongest on Chinese and code-switched audio by the vendor's account.

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where Soniox Speech-to-Text loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Files only, up to 500 seconds and 50 MB; live audio input isn't supported

### Soniox Speech-to-Text (B)

Good for: Price-led multilingual transcription and translation, live or async, and for operators who want no training and no retention.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 77 against 47
- Security & auth, 87 against 33
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 6
- Transparency & trust, 76 against 63

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install

Watch for: No free credits for new accounts since October 2025


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Soniox Speech-to-Text +69

- MiniMax Speech-to-Text (6): Read as a model. No dated release or change of `asr-1.0` was found on the model or API release notes or the status page (0). No dated ASR entries in the last 90 days (0). Support by email and Discord, not tested (6 of 15). No official SDK, and the MCP servers have no transcription tool (0 of 15). No package to judge (0 of 10). Total 6.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (75): Read on the model lines the other Soniox listings use (recency 30, dated releases 10, notice 10, support 15, issues 10, SDKs 15, health 10), where the 1 October note used the tool lines. `stt-rt-v6` and `stt-async-v6` released on 3 November 2026, with Python SDK 2.11.0 (agent text input on `RealtimeSTTConfig`) and soniox-js v2026.11.03 ("Feat/v6 support") the same day (30). Since 6 August, the releases that touch STT code are Python 2.9.0 (11 August, async STT and files), 2.10.0 (2 October, realtime STT authentication), 2.11.0, soniox-js v2026.10.12 (12 October, realtime STT authentication) and v2026.11.03, plus the v6 model entry (10). For notice, the v5 models are removed on 15 December 2026, 42 days after the notice, with requests routed to v6, and WebSocket `api_key` authentication ends on 15 January 2027 with a migration guide; v4 had 14 days (5). A community and support page, with no reply times read (5). SDK issues unread, github.com 403 (3). Current Python and Node SDKs (15). soniox-js runs CI (`.github/workflows/ci.yml`), the Python repository has tests and uv.lock but no CI workflow (7). 30+10+5+5+3+15+7 = 75.

### Security & auth: Soniox Speech-to-Text +54

- MiniMax Speech-to-Text (33): Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of the least-privilege and injection lines. Plain API keys from the console with no scopes found, and the docs say publicly leaked keys may be disabled, as on minimax-voice-cloning (20 of 30). The terms (effective 30 March 2026), as read for minimax-voice-cloning on 4 November, let MiniMax use input and generated content to operate, maintain, develop and improve its services, with no opt-out found, and the privacy policy rules out only training to profile or target consumers (5 of 20). No retention period for uploaded audio or transcripts was found (3 of 15). Each response carries a trace ID, with no audit log found (5 of 15). No security.txt, disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification found, as on the other MiniMax listings (0 of 20). Total 33.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (87): Model reading of the checklist, with training and retention in place of least-privilege and injection lines. "Every API key in a project has a list of permissions": real-time STT, async STT and Files with Read and Write levels, model listing, usage and temporary keys, with `permission_denied` for anything else, and temporary keys that are restricted and expire. Keys go in the WebSocket handshake rather than the URL (30). Customer audio and transcripts are never used for training, per the 1 October check (20). Audio and transcripts aren't retained by default, and async files and transcripts auto-delete after 30 days or on a delete call, per the 1 October check (15). Per-request usage logs with request IDs, duration, tokens and cost (10). SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO/IEC 27001:2022, and the Python SDK's SECURITY.md gives a disclosure route with no acknowledgement time, as soniox-tts. No security.txt (404) and no bug bounty (12). 30+20+15+10+12 = 87.

### Reliability: Soniox Speech-to-Text +30

- MiniMax Speech-to-Text (47): Atlassian Statuspage at status.minimax.io with component history, but its components are LLM, Text-to-Speech and Video Generation, with none for speech to text (10 of 20). With no component, the history holds no record for transcription (5). Limits published with numbers, 2 concurrent connections and 30,000 audio seconds a minute (15). 429 is documented as `rate_limit_error`, and the general error code page says to retry later, with no backoff figures or Retry-After (7 of 15). No SLA in the terms or docs (0). `asr-1.0` is called the current public model with no beta label (10). 10 + 5 + 15 + 7 + 0 + 10 = 47.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (77): Instatus page at status.soniox.com with per-region components and a paged history (20). Minor incidents only since 6 August, with 70 minutes of failed API key creation in the console on 24 August, failed new WebSocket connections to stt-rt.eu.soniox.com between 12:50 and 13:03 UTC on 25 August (existing connections unaffected), and 45 minutes of real-time overload in the Japan region on 8 September ("some customers", partial). October and November have no notices (20). Limits published with numbers, 100 requests a minute, 10 concurrent streams, a connection limit derived from them and a fixed 300-minute stream cap (15). The errors reference documents `limit_exceeded` as HTTP 429 on REST and the STT WebSocket with what to do for each limit, "retry with exponential backoff" for 503 `service_unavailable`, and resubmitting failed async jobs, which aren't auto-retried. No idempotency key, so safe-retry guidance without one (12), as soniox-tts. No SLA found (0). `stt-rt-v6` and `stt-async-v6` are active and the v5 models deprecated, with no preview label (10). 20+20+15+12+0+10 = 77.

### Transparency & trust: Soniox Speech-to-Text +13

- MiniMax Speech-to-Text (63): Closed API with clear terms under Singapore law naming Nanonoble Pte. Ltd., as on the other MiniMax listings (15 of 30). The terms and privacy policy agree that inputs may be used to improve services and that data sits in a United States data centre, with no retention period for audio (8 of 30). No deprecation notice or policy touches the ASR API (10 of 20, for the dated notices elsewhere on the API release notes). Data location stated as the United States and an EU representative named, with third parties only by category (10 of 20). Total 43.
- Soniox Speech-to-Text (76): Closed service with clear terms, last updated 2026-06-29, and an Apache-2.0 Python SDK (15). The security page, limits page and pricing page agree on no training, no default retention and 30-day async deletion (25). Model retirements are dated and old names route to the new model (v5 to v6 on 15 December 2026), though the October 2025 retirement of the preview models was described as accelerated (15). A data residency page names region-specific domains for the US, EU, Japan and India, and no sub-processor list was found (15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | MiniMax Speech-to-Text | Soniox Speech-to-Text | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 47 | 77 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 85 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 70 | even |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 33 | 87 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +54 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 20 | 20 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 6 | 75 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +69 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 63 | 76 | Soniox Speech-to-Text +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **48.4 · D** | **68.5 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | MiniMax Speech-to-Text | Soniox Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Model API | Model API |
| Vendor | MiniMax | Soniox |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.soniox.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | API key | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Pay per use |
| Price for speech-to-text | not published | $0.0017 per minute of audio |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Apache-2.0 (Python SDK) |
| Tools exposed | 0 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | none | 2026-11-03 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-06-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2026-06-29 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | none | 12 stars, 22k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## What the same task costs

| Task | MiniMax Speech-to-Text | Soniox Speech-to-Text |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Transcribe a one-hour meeting | $0.38 | $0.10 to $0.12 |

## How the scores have moved

### MiniMax Speech-to-Text

No score change since it was listed.

### Soniox Speech-to-Text

- +10.3 on 4 November 2026 (C to B): product, new evidence, negative event
- -0.1 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## Verdicts

**MiniMax Speech-to-Text.** MiniMax's ASR API has an OpenAPI file, typed error envelopes and a public price of $0.38 an hour, with diarisation and subtitle output. It takes files of up to 500 seconds only, allows 2 concurrent connections, has no free tier or status component, and no dated release.

**Soniox Speech-to-Text.** About $0.10 an hour async and $0.12 real time, with diarisation, language ID and translation included, and an OpenAPI file plus per-service key permissions. The v6 models arrived on 3 November 2026 and v5 is removed on 15 December. No free credits for new accounts since October 2025, and a 2.x Python SDK minor removed public interfaces.

## Before you call either

### MiniMax Speech-to-Text

1. Split recordings into pieces under 500 seconds before uploading, since longer audio returns 400
2. Convert to mono 16 kHz or a compressed format to stay under 50 MB
3. Use `verbose_json` for speakers and timestamps, and `json` only when streaming
4. Treat 402 `insufficient_balance_error` as final and ask the user to top up
5. Use `https://api.minimaxi.com` for a mainland China account

### Soniox Speech-to-Text

1. Pass `audio_url` for public files and skip the upload step. Delete uploaded files or they count against the 10 GB quota for 30 days
2. Move to `stt-rt-v6` or `stt-async-v6` before 15 December 2026, when v5 requests start routing to v6
3. Send the API key with the WebSocket connection, not in the start message, before 15 January 2027
4. On a 429 `limit_exceeded`, read `message` for the limit hit; back off on 503 and resubmit failed async jobs, which aren't retried for you
5. Split anything over 300 minutes. The cap is fixed

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, MiniMax Speech-to-Text or Soniox Speech-to-Text?

Soniox Speech-to-Text scores 68.5 (B) on agent readiness against MiniMax Speech-to-Text's 48.4 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

### Do MiniMax Speech-to-Text and Soniox Speech-to-Text need an API key?

Both need an API key.

### Can an agent call MiniMax Speech-to-Text and Soniox Speech-to-Text without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for MiniMax Speech-to-Text. Soniox Speech-to-Text has a hosted endpoint at https://api.soniox.com/v1.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/minimax-stt-vs-soniox-stt.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/minimax-stt-vs-soniox-stt.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "minimax-stt", "b": "soniox-stt"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare minimax-stt soniox-stt`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/minimax-stt.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/soniox-stt.json

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